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My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

mattlakeman.org

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Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#241

Post by blackbrokkoli »

m0zg wrote: post #233

This is kinda like me (ex-Soviet person) explaining that the policies a lot of US "progressives" are proposing would, if followed to their logical conclusion, result in everyone living in poverty, and them personally being sent to a labor camp as "counter-revolutionary element" if they were to "succeed". This gets downvoted and flagged right away, but it's still something I will keep telling people, because there's n…

Let's keep Red Scare propaganda out of this thread about something entirely unrelated, please.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#242

Post by glogla »

m0zg wrote: post #233

This is kinda like me (ex-Soviet person) explaining that the policies a lot of US "progressives" are proposing would, if followed to their logical conclusion, result in everyone living in poverty, and them personally being sent to a labor camp as "counter-revolutionary element" if they were to "succeed". This gets downvoted and flagged right away, but it's still something I will keep telling people, because there's n…

US progressives are not asking for US to be more like Soviet Union, they are asking for it to be more like Europe.

Pretending the only two options are unrestrained capitalism with at-will employment, no vacations, and no healthcare for majority of people, and Soviet Union, is actively making the world a worse place.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#243

Post by watwut »

scrollbar wrote: post #211
Ansil849 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a reason that AA is the way it is. What a weird thing to say. Please, what is the reason AA is the way it is? Other than religious brainwashing.

Maybe for: Peer accountability, Community, Empathy, Structure, distraction, Spiritual engagement

AA is no more successful on average then any other program. They don't have scientific reasons for what they do either, it is tradition that tries to help, but that is it. It is religious, because it was created by people who were strong Christians and believed religion is cure.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#244

Post by watwut »

Ansil849 wrote: post #181
legutierr wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jaywalking was instituted as a crime after lobbying by car companies in order to shift the legal liability and moral culpability for pedestrian accidents away from drivers and onto the ordinary people going about their business who were being killed by cars. Your viewpoint with regards to jaywalking is the successful outcome of a propaganda campaign first instituted by people who have probably been dead now for nearl…

So, I take it that you have never ridden in a car? And if you have, you've explicitly assumed responsibility for or complicity with, the potential taking of a life of a pedestrian? Is that what you are saying?

I live in a place where Jaywalking is not a crime. If there is no crossing within 50m or so, it is fully legal to cross the street. The driving looks like this: you observe speed limits and you watch for pedestrians. If you see one about to cross, you stop.

The stories where someone crosses the street and is blamed for jaywalking, because there was crossing 2 miles away are completely bonkers to me.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#245

Post by otherme123 »

kenneth wrote: post #192
si1entstill wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it better now? Were there over initiatives that played a role?

Yes, they shut it down in 1992, but it took another 15 years or so to fully clean up the mess it created.

This puzzles me. The Medication Assisted Treatment (metadone and buprenorphine) started in 1991. The Heroin Assisted Treatment (HAT) started in 1994. People that failed the MAT were enroled into the HAT.

Limited first HAT experiments were found sucessful, and thus expanded in 1999. In 2008 both approaches entered the law.

All data from here: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-020-00412-0 , but you can found it in a lot of papers.

The opioid/heroin epidemic that hit the whole Europe, took place in the 80's, with AIDS making it worse at later 80's and early 90's, causing all countries in Europe to tackle the problem hard starting in the early 90's. Yet you claim that HAT not only was shutdown in early 90's but that it was the thing that created the mess.

Dates don't add up, sorry. Maybe you are talking about a different swiss experiment, and not the internationally famous HAT.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#246

Post by m0zg »

glogla wrote: post #242
m0zg wrote: post #233

This is kinda like me (ex-Soviet person) explaining that the policies a lot of US "progressives" are proposing would, if followed to their logical conclusion, result in everyone living in poverty, and them personally being sent to a labor camp as "counter-revolutionary element" if they were to "succeed". This gets downvoted and flagged right away, but it's still something I will keep telling people, because there's n…

US progressives are not asking for US to be more like Soviet Union, they are asking for it to be more like Europe. Pretending the only two options are unrestrained capitalism with at-will employment, no vacations, and no healthcare for majority of people, and Soviet Union, is actively making the world a worse place.

[flagged]

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#247

Post by hedberg10 »

tombert wrote: post #81

When I was nine years old, my cousin died of a heroin overdose at nineteen years old. Most of the grownups around me were very sad, but I didn't really know my cousin very well; he lived on the opposite side of the country, and he was a full decade older than me so the times I did see him we didn't really play together, and so I wasn't really able to feel "sad" about it. People I don't know die every day, I can't fee…

> my cousin had been taken so young?

He wasn't taken. He took himself. Exercise: Everytime you remove agency, reintroduce it.

"I am depressed". No, you are depressing yourself. "I am helpless". No, you are making yourself helpless. These are active processes. Let's get more controversial: "I am being bullied". No, you are letting people bully you.

I know this is harsh. I know the societal memes and phrases are the warm place. A sigh, the Soma of "Nothing can be done" or "Somebody needs to do something!!" is not a solution but paralysis.

You can read it in the article: The parents did everything for the addict, he did nothing himself. It didn't work out now, did it? Never does.

(Not absolving the Sacklers of their guilt, that is a separate issue)

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#248

Post by watwut »

SkittyDog wrote: post #30
ipnon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems a little insensitive given the original is about a friend dying from drug overdose and video games aren't deadly.

Can I assume you've never had the privilege of knowing a hardcore gambling addict? I'm not taking about weekend poker players, here... I mean people who've lost their wife, kids, house, and job to a gambling habit. They have zero savings, mountains of debt, and if you lend them $20 to get groceries, they'll go hungry after gambling it away? Modern video games are designed by highly paid, PHd-level behavioral scientis…

> I mean people who've lost their wife, kids, house, and job to a gambling habit.

The wifes and kids are secondary victims there. The tragedy is not that the addict lost them. Them leaving is them getting chance at better life.

The tragedy is that wifes and kids were likely mistreated for years and went through hell too. The wifes earnings were lost to addiction too and she did not even had fun playing. The kids were missing school supplies and had to live in tense environment where one parent was addict and other constantly overstressed and very likely cracking.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#249

Post by qaq »

glogla wrote: post #242
m0zg wrote: post #233

This is kinda like me (ex-Soviet person) explaining that the policies a lot of US "progressives" are proposing would, if followed to their logical conclusion, result in everyone living in poverty, and them personally being sent to a labor camp as "counter-revolutionary element" if they were to "succeed". This gets downvoted and flagged right away, but it's still something I will keep telling people, because there's n…

US progressives are not asking for US to be more like Soviet Union, they are asking for it to be more like Europe. Pretending the only two options are unrestrained capitalism with at-will employment, no vacations, and no healthcare for majority of people, and Soviet Union, is actively making the world a worse place.

Do they really though? The most common response I get when I ask people why they just don't move to EU outside of family reasons is that after tax comp is way less than US. It never clicks though why is it way less.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#250

Post by dustintrex »

s5300 wrote: post #68
nwienert wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to throw in my 2c, I’ve had dilaudid a few times for an injury and other opiates for various reasons, and while they feel great, they really never cross my mind much and I don’t hold them close to many sober experiences. Not even as good as other drugs, of which I could list 3-4 I’d consider as or more enjoyable. The above comment feels like a really dramatic description of opiates. I don’t think most anyone wit…

> feels like a really dramatic description of opiates. I don’t think most anyone with a moderately stable life is at risk of addiction trying them. A few years back, perhaps close to a decade ago, there was a fairly well known reporter/journalist who said this same thing. Of course, he was cocky enough to test his presumptions & tried either some form of opiate or heroin, can't recall exactly which. He by all means h…

Summary here: https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/68srty/spon...
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